IRELAND SPENDS less on its court system relative to national wealth than any other state in the Council of Europe. It also has the fewest number of judges per 100,000 population. However, its judges are among the best paid in Europe.
These figures are contained in a comprehensive 334-page report prepared by the Commission for the Efficiency of Justice which was founded by the Council of Europe in 2002 to promote the rule of law and fundamental rights in Europe.
It is composed of experts from the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, who carried out a survey among all of the members.
The data for the report was collected in 2006.
While acknowledging that the legal systems among the various member states differed, the commission measured elements such as the amounts of money spent on court systems, prosecutorial systems and legal aid; the numbers of judges, support staff and lawyers; the use of technology in the court system; waiting times for different types of cases; provisions for victims of crime and the training and regulation of the legal and judicial professions.
It found that Ireland spent €19 per inhabitant on the courts in 2006, placing it about third from the bottom of the states surveyed in monetary terms.
However, when compared with per capita GDP, Ireland is at the bottom of the 43 countries that provided data, spending only 0.1 per cent of per capita GDP. The next lowest amount was spent by Norway.
These places were reversed when it came to prosecution services, with Norway spending the least of all countries surveyed (0.005 per cent of per capita GDP), and Ireland spending second least, with 0.02 per cent.
In contrast, Ireland scores very well in its provision for legal aid, where its expenditure on legal aid relative to national wealth is exceeded only by the three United Kingdom legal jurisdictions, and by Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands.
It grants legal aid in both criminal and civil cases, and in 2006 120 cases per 10,000 population received such aid.
The amount granted to each case exceeded that in most other countries, with an average of €1,245 given on average to each case.
This was exceeded only by England and Wales, Latvia and the Russian Federation, but in the two latter countries the number of cases receiving legal aid, relative to population, was minuscule.
Ireland’s expenditure on its courts included a substantial proportion on maintenance of and investment in court buildings and on information technology.
There was a relatively small proportion of court expenditure spent on judicial salaries, largely because, compared with other countries, Ireland has very few judges, the lowest per head of population of all the countries surveyed.
There are 3.1 judges in Ireland per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with almost 12 in France, 28 in Germany and Greece and up to 50 in some of the former states of Eastern Europe.
In the other common law jurisdictions, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales, the numbers are 4.4, 21.3 and seven per 100,000 respectively.
The common law countries also pay their judges much higher salaries than do the countries in the rest of Europe, with a District Court judge in Ireland starting at €127,664 in 2006 and a Supreme Court judge earning €222,498. The salaries in Britain were slightly higher.
When compared with average national salaries, the contrast is striking.
In Northern Ireland a senior judge earns 11 times the average annual salary, and in the Republic it is more than seven times.
In most of the original EU member states, the ratio is between three and four times the average wage.